I had a class in Teacher’s College where part of the coursework was learning how to use a tape recorder and an overhead projector.
Intro to Physics.
The instructor walked in the first day and handed out a reading list and said if we turned in a statement at the end of the semester that we had read half or more of the books on the list, we would pass with a B. If we didn’t, we would pass with a C.
To get an A, you had to attend class, turn in the homework assignments, do the labs, etc. In his words, “I’m only interested in teaching people who want to learn.”
I took the B and ran. In my defense, I did read one of the books, but I don’t remember a damn thing from it.
I didn’t learn anything in Introduction to Speech from an academic perspective, but from a social perspective I learned that the Hooters girl who sat in front of me would totally show me her tits if I helped her with her term project and applauded warmly when she practiced it.
And that was one helluva learning experience.
Well, there ya go. All it takes is applying yourself a little.
And what years did you go to Antioch?
It’s a tie. Both classes were at Monterey Peninsula College.
- Speech, because the instructor was just terrible.
- Drama, because the instructor was insane.
Had they not been terrible instructors, then perhaps the courses would have been worth the time, aggravation, and money involved.
I thought of the bowling class I took first year too. The first day of class (after bowling in the mid-60’s) the instructor actually held me after class and told me I was doing everything wrong. He told me stand here, hold the ball this way, aim there, release here, etc. I followed his directions, threw the ball – strike. He said “See, nothing to it.” and walked off.
I don’t consider the bowling and billiards classes I took worthless because I enjoy doing those things, and they are more enjoyable if one does them better.
The most worthless class I took was the last semester of calculus. I have never in my life needed to know calculus. The most useful classes I took were upper division writing courses. I write every day, and writing well makes me look so much smarter than I really am. 
I think that most phys ed classes are a joke. The teachers assume that you already know how to do most of the stuff, it’s just a question of applying yourself. It was very, very rare when a teacher would actually teach us things like how to use gym equipment for maximum benefit and minimum risk. When I joined a gym as an adult, I still had no idea how to lift weights. Maybe it’s a Texas thing, but most of the gym teachers didn’t give a shit about any students who weren’t on a sports team, and those were the students who got the teachers time. This wasn’t just my experience, either. I hung out with nonjocks from middle school through college, and in two states, and in every one of them, unless a student was a jock/cheerleader, that student did NOT get much help in PE.
I was going to say this too but couldn’t remember the name FORTRAN. I went to Engineering school in the early 1980’s.
I have a question. How the hell do American university’s work? I always hear people refer to ‘humanities requirements’ ‘physical requirements’ etc but what are they?
In the UK - I studied political science for example - in my first year I had things like ‘introduction to comparitive politics’ ‘political philosophy’ ‘social policy’ ‘understanding the European Union’ and various others directly linked to my course.
I don’t understand all the random stuff you guys seem to do.
Back when I was going to college, I wanted a degree in accounting or business management.
I had to take what was called a “core curriculum”, these are the classes that the college decreed that everyone MUST take, in order to become a more rounded person. In my case, I was able to take a series of tests that proved that I knew the first year’s worth of English, science, arts, math, and a couple of other subjects, but most people couldn’t pass those tests. The college wanted every student to have a basic knowledge of a wide range of subjects. Everyone (except those who tested out of it) took English 101, but since the school required another semester of English, there were courses in things like World Literature, American Literature, Literature (of various eras), etc, all of which counted as a second semester. There were also various flavors of science classes, from the very basics, which even the least interested folks would take in order to fulfill the requirement, and then there were the more advanced classes, which the students who were actually interested in or who would actually need science took, like the med students. Business students generally took business math, which focused on those operations which a business person would need. There were some general math courses for the general population, and advanced math for those who wanted or needed it. Basically, college/university courses were like a cafeteria, where you choose your main course, and then fill it out with a few vegetables and possibly some dessert. You could have your choice of carrots or spinach or potatoes or tomatoes or broccoli, but the college would insist that you DO choose at least two veggies, sort of thing. If you wanted more veggies, you could get them, but you’d have to pay extra for them.
What you describe is more like our two year colleges, where the focus is to get only courses that are directly related to the degree. Two year colleges issue AA degrees, and they also offer a lot of programs which don’t issue degrees, but which ARE designed to help someone find a job in a field, like office worker, or medical technician. Regular colleges/universities generally require at least four years’ worth of classes to earn a bachelor’s degree. Theoretically, you CAN get a bachelor’s degree in three years, if you take summer classes.
It’s fairly common, these days, for a student to get the core curriculum classes at a two year college, which charges a significantly lower tuition rate, and then go on to a traditional college to complete a bachelor’s degree. If a student wants or needs a higher degree, the next degree is master’s, and I’m not sure exactly what that entails. After the master’s is the Ph.D.
French. Had to take a foreign language, knew some French from high school, and have never used it since – which is exactly how I’d figured it’d play out before taking the class.
The idea is that one should at least make an effort towards a “well-rounded” education. I actually agree with this – peopleought to know more than their narrow specialty, and they ought to get some exercise. At MIT there is a physical education requirement (which I preferred immensely over my high school’s very limited phys. ed. classes), and a requirement that you pass a minimum swimming ability test. They also wanted to battle the stereotype of techies ignorant of anything non-technical, so there’s a “humanities” requirement every year (which I would’ve fulfilled anyway).
There are technical requirements that fall outside your specialization, as well – everyone is required to take a lab course and at least one chemistry course, and everyone has to complete a sequence in calculus, even if your final major doesn’t require labs, chemistry, or calculus. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to require some biology and economics, IMHO, in the interests of a well-rounded education, but I guess it was hard enough to get people to take the distribution courses they did take.
To my mind, it’s a good thing to try to break down the walls between C.P. DSnow’s “Two Cultures”, even if this crudely.
The way it usually works is that for your first two years of undergrad, about half your courses will be “general education” courses. Some of your major courses will fill the need - i.e. if you major in Biology you won’t need Science general ed coursework. The last two years will be much more focused on your major (but you may have to do some clean up work if you didn’t bother to finish your general ed coursework).
It accomplishes something else in addition to making you well rounded. If you jump into Biology with four courses and discover that “it was a lot more fun in high school, but I don’t like it now” its hard to switch. With the U.S. system, the first two years are almost an exploration, its really easy to switch majors during your first two years (one of the reasons many (most?) Americans take five years to finish their Bachelors.)
Yeah, I’m probably going to have to go with advanced calculus too. Even the horrible, boring linear algebra class had some marginally useful fallout, but I’ve never in my professional career needed to take a triple integral or apply Green’s theorem or do a Taylor series expansion. Of course this wasn’t obvious at the time – there were probably career decisions I could have made that would have made this class worthwhile.
Mind you, taking the class and finding out I hated advanced calculus ensured that I would never make those career decisions so maybe it wasn’t a complete waste :-).
I’d say it was a 2 way tie between Intro to Information Technology in graduate school, or the first time I took “Analysis of Algorithms” in undergrad.
Intro to IT was useless because I’d already had almost 6 years of IT experience programming on ERP systems for manufacturing companies. I knew how the IT world worked, what IT did, and how it related to the business.
Analysis of algorithms was worthless the first time around because we had a pointy-headed prof whose entire concept of teaching was to do proofs. I realize that proofs are useful for showing that an algorithm is say… O(n), but I never found it all that useful for figuring out that a particular algorithm WAS actually O(n).
The analysis part was wholly lacking, and since I’m not good at proofs, I ended up with a D in the class.
The part that was extra galling was that the following semester, I had a different prof, and he didn’t stress the proof aspect, and I made a B+.
I went to a Catholic university and took an eleective sociology class called Marriage & Family. It was taught by a nun, which I thought was somewhat ironic. Anyway, I remember almost nothing from that class.
Also, most of the upper level math classes I took have proven to be of zero use to me throughout my career.
Because we in the US don’t have widespread competency testing for high school leavers* (ie., 18 year olds) here like A-levels, or whatever they’re called now, colleges and universities have absolutely no idea whether their incoming students know lots of things or are as ignorant as sheep droppings (generally the latter).
So, higher education in the US is generally spread over 4 years for baccalaureate programs, and as Lynn describes, the first two years are mostly used for “general education” courses to make sure students have a basic grounding in core information.
General education courses are generally set up in a “pick one or two of the following courses to satisfy Requirement X” manner, although some are fixed (eg., English, or college algebra, though even then there’s usually an advanced class that could be used to fill the requirement). Some of the options will also satisfy later requirements within your particular course of study. See here for an example.
Once you finish your two years, you theoretically know all the stuff you should have learned in high school, plus a bit more, and you’re ready for upper level courses.
For example, I was a political science major, and I took Introduction to American Government or somesuch to fulfil the social studies requirement; it also counted as one of the courses toward my major.
Most US college hopefuls take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, which is basically an IQ test with a writing sample. There’s a mathematics section, but nothing more complicated than “solve for x if 2x* + 1 = 5". Some take the ACT, which I hear requires slightly more actual knowledge. There are competency exams called the SAT Iis, but AFAIK very few colleges and universities care about them.
I took that one at a community college, taught by a professor who was about 120 years old. He told us the first day that no matter what the course catalog said, he preferred *his *title for the class: Sex and Sin.
Oh, and it was a nun who gave me the best advice ever regarding episiotomy care after childbirth: sit straight down; you’re going to be tempted to sit on one buttock so you’re not on your stitches, but that’s going to pull at them and hurt like a bitch. (Yes, her exact words.) Many nuns were not always nuns. 
Humanities 101, taken to fill a mandatory credit bucket of liberal arts stuff.
It was covered by a temp faculty guy who was simultaneously taking a workshop on how to build dulcimers.
Half of the classes consisted of having a random person read a loud to the rest of the class from the required textbook (filled with fluff abridged fiction pieces just like Reader’s Digest). We wrote the minimum handful of 1 page papers on whatever was “lectured” in that manner.
The other half of the classes were him telling and demonstrating his progress on his dulcimer construction, the history of dulcimers, and sample dulcimers brought in for show. He didn’t know how to play at all, but would demo all of them for us just the same. Did you know you can use a feather for a pick? Did you know that the proper choice of feather speaks volumes to you artistic intention as a dulcimerautomistoligist? Be careful when choosing that seagull feather! (A whole session was dedicated to feathers).